affections of her husband. If, in either of these cases, she can be
brought to face and understand this truth, her grief will invert itself
again and become a conscious joy...."

"I wonder if Grandmother believes all that," speculated Gerda, who did.

Then she said aloud, "Grandmother" (that was what Gerda and Kay called
her, distinguishing her thus from Great-Grandmama), "tea's ready."

Mrs. Hilary woke with a start. "The Breath of Life" fell on the floor
with a bang. Mrs. Hilary looked up and saw Gerda and blushed.

"I've been asleep.... I took up this ridiculous book of yours to look at.
The most absurd stuff.... How can you children muddle your minds with it?
Besides, it isn't at all a _nice_ book for you, my child. I came on
several very queer things...."

But the candid innocence of Gerda's wide blue eyes on hers transcended
"nice" and "not nice."... You might as well talk like that to a wood
anemone, or a wild rabbit.... If her grandmother had only known, Gerda at
twenty had discussed things which Mrs. Hilary, in all her sixty-three
years, had never heard mentioned. Gerda knew of things of which Mrs.
Hilary would have indignantly and sincerely denied the existence. Gerda's
young mind was a cess-pool, a clear little dew-pond, according to how you
looked at it. Gerda and Gerda's friends knew no inhibitions of speech or
thought. They believed that the truth would make them free, and the truth
about life is, from some points of view, a squalid and gross thing. But
better look it in the face, thought Gerda and her contemporaries, than
pretend it isn't there, as elderly people do.

"I don't want you to pretend anything isn't there, darling," Neville,
between the two generations, had said to Gerda once. "Only it seems to me
that some of you children have one particular kind of truth too heavily
on your minds. It seems to block the world for you."

"You mean sex," Gerda had told her, bluntly. "Well, it runs all through
life, mother. What's the use of hiding from it? The only way to get even
with it is to face it. And _use_ it."

"Face it and use it by all means. All I meant was, it's a question of
emphasis. There _are_ other things...."

Of course Gerda knew that. There was drawing, and poetry, and beauty, and
dancing, and swimming, and music, and politics, and economics. Of course
there were other things; no doubt about that. They were like songs, like
colour, like sunrise, like flowers, these other things. Bu